


Friendships...?

by Chimney_on_the_roof



Series: His Silver Lining [4]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Angst...?, Developing Friendships, Fluff, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash, Trans Alexander Hamilton, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25923073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chimney_on_the_roof/pseuds/Chimney_on_the_roof
Summary: “Jefferson, I believe.” He whipped his head around when John almost choked on his water. Alex watched him with worry as he coughed and managed to ask, “Really?”He slowly nodded. “You know him?”A.k.a. Thomas comes over for dinner ...and more things happen
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton & John Laurens, Alexander Hamilton & Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens
Series: His Silver Lining [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872574
Comments: 2
Kudos: 46





	Friendships...?

**Author's Note:**

> Read the other parts first if you don't want to feel like one of those flies trapped in a random house with weird invisible walls called windows

“ _What you do to me…_ ” John finished. He carefully looked up from his guitar at Alex, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him. Alex gave him a small applause. He knew how insecure John was about his guitar playing, even though he was, in Alex’s opinion, very good. He was thrilled that John had even played for him.

“That was beautiful, John,” he told his housemate. John blushed and muttered a thanks. “Do you take requests?” Alex asked with a small smile.

“Uh, sure,” John said, “But I’ll have to practise first. There’s not many songs I can play.”

Alex shrugged. “Can you play Downtown?” He had good memories associated with that song, as it was the first song he and John had danced to, so long ago already. It signified the beginning of their friendship, as Alex wasn’t afraid to call their relationship anymore.

John smiled at the memory and turned redder. “I can’t play it yet, but I’ll learn it for you,” he said with a wink. Alex felt himself blush too and hoped John wouldn’t notice. He enjoyed the relative silence in the room for a moment, only interrupted by the ticking of a clock and the sound of John flipping the pages of a small book with chords and instructions on his bed, before he hesitantly said, “Do you think I could sing?”

John looked up curiously. “What do you mean?”

Alex slumped his shoulders. “No, never mind, it’s stupid.” After hearing John sing like nobody was listening, he kind of wished he had that courage. He knew he wasn’t particularly bad at singing; he was just insecure about it and he didn’t like how high his voice was. Singing would only highlight the pitch of his voice. And his singing was nothing compared to John’s, anyway.

John bent forward over his guitar. “No, I’m serious, what do you mean? I know you can sing pretty well,” he said reassuringly.

“But-” Alex started, but he stopped himself. “Well, what I mean is,” he looked up at John, who was watching him with genuine curiosity. “Do you think I’ll ever have your courage to sing? Do you think I’ll ever stop worrying about-” These questions had crossed his mind countless of times, but saying them out loud made him choke up.

“Do you think I’ll ever be content with my voice, with- with my body?”

John put his guitar aside and lowered himself off his bed so he was on the same level as Alex, who watched him with his violet blue eyes. “I don’t know, Alex,” he told him. “But what if I told you I like you just the way you are?”

Alex heard his heart beat loudly in his ears and he could only stare at John in front of him. His curls framed his face perfectly. He’d been watching those curls dance around when John was singing, and he wished John would keep his hair down more often. The hazel in his irises was barely visible because of the width of his pupils. It was indeed pretty dark in this room.

He didn’t know what to do. _What if John told him he liked him just the way he was?_ he repeated the question in his head. He didn’t know. He could only examine the face of the guy in front of him.

“What do you mean?” he finally echoed John’s question from earlier, his voice higher than he had intended.

John gave him a helpless smile. “I like you because you’re _you_. You make me feel safe. You have so much courage, more than you realise. I am proud of you, Alex.”

Tears started to cloud his vision, but he didn’t wipe them away. John was proud of him. Nobody had ever told him they were _proud_ of him. In the back of his mind a voice told him that John was only saying this because he felt sorry, but Alex knew better. This was John.

But if he was indeed as courageous as John said he was, why was he so afraid to tell people he was transgender? Why didn’t he have the courage to tell John about his past?

…Why didn’t he have the courage to ask John how much, exactly, he liked him?

A tear rolled down his cheek. He wanted to hug John, but the way they sat on the floor didn’t allow them to hug easily. Besides, he didn’t have the courage for it either.

As if John could read his thoughts, he moved to sit next to Alex and put an arm around him. Hesitantly, Alex put his head on his shoulder. He smiled despite himself. He’d wanted to do this for ages. John’s hair tickled his forehead and he lifted a hand to touch the curls.

“What does it all matter anyway,” he heard himself whisper.

Despite a strange first impression of him, Alex had befriended Thomas. It started when Lafayette told Alex that Thomas had told him he was impressed by Alex. That had puzzled Alex, which honestly didn’t surprise him much after the other strange things Thomas said. Not even a day later, Alex spotted the guy on campus and they made eye contact. He swore Thomas had a sixth sense for people looking at him.

“What’s the best time of the day to mix apple juice with milk?” Alex asked with a smile tugging at his lips. Thomas snorted.

“That depends on when you’re going to drink it.” He put his hands in the pockets of his perfectly fitting pants.

“And what if I freeze it and eat it like ice cream?”

“Hmm,” Thomas said, “Then I suppose the best time is somewhere between three past nine and twenty-seven to ten in the evening, depending on how long the milk has been out of the fridge.”

Alex nodded in consideration. “Cool, thanks.” He flashed Thomas a smile, who rolled his eyes.

They had more of those encounters where they would have conversations about nothing really, sometimes ending up debating. Occasional students who happened to pick up a few words they exchanged – “You can’t know if a plant is happy because you’re not a plant” “But what if I am, hypothetically?”, for example – would give them weird looks, making Alex and Thomas give each other a look of understanding. The conversations would end as abruptly as they started; by Alex who couldn’t hold his laugh anymore, by Thomas who rolled his eyes, by Alex grinning at a passer-by who had been listening to them…

And then they would talk like the entire conversation hadn’t happened. They talked about school, mostly, but also about the deeper stuff like crushes. Thomas was totally oblivious to two girls who were practically swooning over him, and when Alex told him, he had made a horrified face. “But I’m gay,” he said.

Alex avoided talking about family and his past, although he could tell Thomas was curious. He could also tell that Thomas was more relaxed around him than around others, which made him proud of both of them. Of Thomas, because Alex knew he didn’t have many friends. Of himself, because he had managed to make a friend without Aaron’s help. Still, there was the fear that Thomas would leave him too one day, like so many before him had, but he couldn’t find himself being bothered by that. He tried to enjoy the friendship while it lasted.

“There’s a friend coming over for dinner,” Alex told John when they happened to be in the kitchen at the same time on a Saturday morning, a couple of weeks after John had played the guitar for him.

John filled his glass with water. “Who?” he asked, before taking a sip from his drink and looking at Alex.

“Thomas. He’s a year older than me, so you might know him?” Alex halted spreading peanut butter on his slice of bread to shoot John a glance. It wasn’t very likely, but the chance was there since John was a year above Alex as well.

“What’s his last name?”

“Jefferson, I believe.” He whipped his head around when John almost choked on his water. Alex watched him with worry as he coughed and managed to ask, “Really?”

He slowly nodded. “You know him?”

Instead of answering his question, John asked, “How is Jefferson your friend?”

Alex shrugged. “We met at a party a few weeks ago. He’s nice, really.”

John huffed. “He’s weird. Are you sure we’re talking about the same Thomas Jefferson? Tall, asks weird-ass questions, looks like he’ll kill you if you look at him?”

Alex rolled his eyes. “Yup, that’s him. He’s not that bad.”

“Sure.” John didn’t sound convinced. “How do you put up with him? Hang on, did he ask you that question with the lamppost?”

Despite John’s obvious dislike for Thomas, Alex smiled. “The ‘If you were a walking lamppost, where would you go’ one? Yeah, he did.”

“What about that question made you think ‘oh, he’s a nice guy, let’s have dinner together’?” John did a poor imitation of Alex.

Alex ignored him and asked, “Did he ask you the same thing? What’d you say?”

John set his glass of water down and shrugged a shoulder. “I said I would walk to his bedroom window to piss him off with my dazzling, eternal light.”

Alex snorted. “What is your connection with him anyway?”

“Thomas is like, an ever-present person on campus and I’ve learned to ignore him after an, let’s say, unfortunate conversation with him.” Alex tilted his head and John explained, “Basically, he asked me what my least favourite colour was and he was wearing this obnoxious magenta jacket, and if I even had a least favourite colour before that, I still would’ve said magenta. Well, I didn’t know it was called magenta so I said ‘Whatever the hell that colour is,’ and he said magenta, so…”

Alex chuckled. He could totally imagine Thomas casually explaining the different shades of purple, with a John in front of him who couldn’t care less.

“So that guy is coming over for dinner?”

“Yup.”

“Do you expect me to join?”

Alex squinted as he looked at John. “Would you like to join?”

John huffed. “Dude, I’d rather starve in my own room than have dinner with Thomas… Jefferson. Have fun tonight, though,” he added with a sudden change of tone. Alex was sure John wanted to say a swear word between Thomas’s first and last name, but had changed his mind.

“Thanks,” he said, and continued spreading peanut butter on his sandwich. He saw John watch him from the corner of his eye and he felt his face go warm. “What?” he suddenly said, turning to face John, emphasising the word by smacking the plain slice of bread on top of the one with peanut butter.

His housemate – and friend – smiled. “Are you really eating a sandwich with just peanut butter?”

Alex rolled his eyes. He’d seen John critically eye his sandwiches before, since they ate breakfast together whenever they could, but never cared too much to ask him about it. “Why? It tastes good.”

“But,” John slyly stepped closer until they were barely inches from touching, “What if I told you sandwiches can taste better than just ‘good’?”

If Alex could raise one eyebrow, he would’ve definitely done just that. Instead, he raised both of his eyebrows. “Then I’d say, good for you.” He went to cut the sandwich in half, but John reached across Alex’s chest to grab his wrist before his knife could touch the bread.

“You just need to add one thing to make this sandwich _delicious_!” John said with a sly grin. Alex’s heartbeat increased because of how close they were standing to each other, but that didn’t stop him from saying, nearly exclaiming, “I’m not eating jelly with my peanut butter! That shit is disgusting. Honestly.” He pointed his peanut buttered knife at John to support his words.

John let go of his wrist and held up his hands. “Who said anything about jelly?”

“You were going to say it, I could feel it.”

“Not at all.”

Alex shifted so his entire body was turned to John. Before he could say anything, though, John reached past Alex’s head for one of the cabinets above the counter. “Mind your head,” he said as he opened the one directly above Alex’s sandwich. Alex ducked away to avoid getting hit by the door, and took his plate with him so John wouldn’t be able to mess with his breakfast. John took out a small plastic jar with various cake decorations Alex had never seen before. Not that he ever bothered to look through the cabinets anyway.

“Come here with your boring sandwich,” John beckoned. Apprehensively but mildly interested, Alex put his plate back on the counter. John immediately grabbed it and pried the slices of bread apart to display the peanut butter, and with a pointed look at Alex he sprinkled chocolate sprinkles on the peanut butter. Putting the other slice of bread on top again, he made grabby hands for the knife Alex was still holding. He cut the sandwich in half and went to cut the crusts off. “No-”

John held up the knife to silence him. Alex watched and let it happen. Finally, John stuffed one of the crusts in his mouth and handed Alex his plate. He said something Alex couldn’t understand because of the crusts muffling John’s words, spraying crumbs at him. Alex waited patiently for him to swallow.

“I promise, it’s way better like this,” John finally said, grabbing the other crust and stuffing it in his mouth. When he and John ate breakfast together, they usually sat on the counter due to the lack of a kitchen table – John munching on his cereals, Alex eating his bread with peanut butter. But this morning they weren’t in a rush to get to school on time, so John steered Alex towards the living room. It was rare for John to be home – in the apartment – on weekends, but he claimed that his father wouldn’t mind. Alex got the impression John’s father didn’t want to see him by the way John had said it, but he didn’t comment. He also didn’t comment on how weirdly domestic the two of them were becoming.

“This shit is gorgeous.”

John grinned at him. “Told you!”

John’s words from weeks ago had stuck with Alex. _I am proud of you, Alex._ Now that he was paying attention to it, he could see John’s gaze soften whenever they made eye contact. John had become surer about himself and had taken up teasing Alex. Somehow, the song Downtown came to his mind. “When you’re alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go downtown” he remembered. He tried to remember how the rest of the song went while he stirred a butter-and-flour mixture and simultaneously poured milk into the pan. He wondered if John had gotten around to learn it on the guitar yet.

“It smells good,” John said behind his back. Alex glanced back, and John smiled at him. He blushed and quickly turned back to the stove to add cheese to the mixture.

“Is there enough if I want to join after all?” John asked, looking into the pan as he joined by Alex’s side.

Alex nodded without hesitation. “I already thought you’d want to.” He grinned at John, who lightly punched his arm. “But you’ll have to set the coffee table.” John tried to punch him harder, but Alex had already seen it coming and did a step back. This caused John to hit nothing but air and his fist awkwardly hovered in front of Alex. For a short moment, Alex was stunned as he wondered why his first impulse was to kiss John’s hand. He didn’t, though, and swatted it away with his cheese-covered spatula.

John was quick to withdraw his hand. “Gross.” He wiped it on Alex’s apron. “Why do you even have an apron?”

“Uh…” Alex needed some time to recover from the touch that would’ve been inappropriate in any other situation. “I won it in a crossword puzzle competition.”

John laughed and Alex looked at him in time to see the curls bounce around his face. “A crossword puzzle competition?”

Alex chuckled a little and looked back at the mixture he was stirring. “Yeah. I was desperate.”

“For an apron.”

“For anything, really.”

John’s laugh faltered. “Shit, dude. When was this?”

He was saved from the conversation by knocking on the door. “Hold this,” he said to John and handed him the spatula. He hurried out of the kitchen, but when he was in the living room John poked his head out from the kitchen. “What am I supposed to do with this?” He waved with the spatula.

“Just…” Alex made a vague gesture, “Keep stirring.” He rushed to the front door of the apartment.

“Just keep stirring, just keep stirring, just keep stirring, stirring, stirring…” He heard John sing. He didn’t know if he’d made it up on the spot, but knowing John, it was probably a variation of some song.

Alex let Thomas in and quickly finished cooking. When he served the macaroni and cheese, earning a surprised smile from Thomas, he and Thomas were quick to start a heated discussion about numbers.

“Why would seven even be better than one? I mean, I know it’s a higher number, you’ve already said that-”

“The seven has this fancy indent, but not always, and isn’t it cool that whether you write a seven with or without the indent, people recognise it as a seven!”

“Just like the a and the g have varying ways of writing? The seven isn’t the only-”

“Yeah, but the seven is a number, not a letter.”

“How about the four?”

“The indent in the seven is more prominent than whatever weird crisis the number four has going on-”

Thomas sighed and Alex considered it a victory. He looked over at John who was slowly eating his macaroni, seemingly uninterested in the conversation. Alex was hyperaware of the strangeness of the discussion, and he wasn’t about to ask John’s opinion as he had already voiced his opinion on Thomas and his weirdness.

“How long have you two been living here?” Thomas asked. John looked up suddenly. Alex smiled at the surprise written all over his face that wasn’t uncommon among people who heard them talk and witnessed the abrupt change of subject.

“This is my second year living here, John moved in about half a year after I did.”

“You’re a junior, right?” Thomas asked John, who nodded in response and returned his focus to the plate in front of him. He sat on the ground on the other side of Thomas and Alex, who were on the couch with their plates on their laps. Alex hadn’t heard John say much since Thomas arrived, and he also noticed a sort of tightness in Thomas’s behaviour towards John.

Alex realised this was a side of John he hadn’t seen yet. He had only ever seen the side of John he showed him; the side that cheered him up, that danced and singed, teased him… But this was the first time he saw John interact with someone else than him. He wasn’t even sure if he’d ever heard John and the house owner have a conversation.

He wondered what John was like at school. Was he the guy that paid attention and always took notes, or the guy that was always asleep? And did he sit at the front and spoke up often, or did he sit back and let others do the talking? Did he have friends? Did he have a crush? Alex mentally slapped himself for that last question.

He thought having two of his friends interact with each other was actually turning out to be a good thing. It was weird, though, seeing John behave so different. He wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he was normal again. Or, at least, what he considered normal.

“Alex?” Thomas and John were both looking at him.

“Hmm?”

“When is your birthday?” By the way John emphasised ‘your’, Alex supposed he had missed a part of the conversation where he and Thomas told each other their birthdays. Great conversation, he thought sarcastically.

“January eleventh,” he said. “Yours?” Thomas’s birthday was April thirteenth, and John’s was October twenty-eight, they told him in a tone that told him that they had indeed already told each other.

“So my birthday is closest,” Alex said, and the others nodded in acknowledgement. Alex wasn’t unaffected by the tension between John and Thomas, and felt every possible conversation topic slip away. John immediately excused himself from the table after they had finished their macaroni and cheese in silence.

Thomas helped Alex figure out how the TV worked and they watched a film together. Alex felt himself become himself again, the tension forgotten, and he and Thomas made fun of the bad acting and storyline, imitating the actors and trying to predict every move.

“I think the message of this film was that giants are actually computer-generated …things and shouldn’t be feared,” Alex said as the end credits started to roll.

“Well,” Thomas countered, “If they’re computer-generated, you should be afraid of what else they can do that they aren’t showing. I mean, you saw those weird attacking rats-”

“Those were rats?”

“-and they’re computer-generated too. They could easily turn into one of those giants.”

Alex considered this and shrugged. “You want some more water? I’m sorry I don’t have anything else.”

By the time Thomas left, Alex heard John play the guitar from behind his closed door. He considered knocking on his door and coming in, but decided against it. He didn’t know what was up with John and thought the best choice was to give him some space.

Alex went to his own room and closed the door behind him. He had hoped on doing something fun with John this first Saturday night they both spent at the apartment. He dropped himself on his bed after taking his binder off, and mindlessly played a game on his phone Hercules had forced him to download. Fifteen minutes later his phone needed charging, so he rolled over to the charger close to the ground, having to lie in an uncomfortable position as he continued playing on his phone while it was charging.

Asleep with his head and arms hanging off the bed, phone on the floor in front of him, was how John found Alex when he entered his room with his guitar. Alex immediately shot awake when he heard the door to his room open. He saw John trying and failing to hide a smile.

“Ow,” Alex said as he sat up. His back hurt and he stretched, discovering his arms hurt too. He wondered how long he’d slept, but he didn’t know at what time he had fallen asleep. He checked his phone and saw it had thirty-three percent. He still didn’t know how long he’d slept. Only then acknowledging John, who was still in the doorway smiling at him, he said a cheerful “Hi!”

John’s smile widened. “Hi! Can I come in?”

“Sure, yes, sure.” He rolled his shoulders in an attempt to relieve some of the pain, only making it worse.

“You’re still half-asleep, aren’t you?” John asked with a grin as he sat down next to Alex on his bed and positioned his guitar on his leg.

“I’m not,” he said with a yawn. He fought the urge to put his head on John’s shoulder. He’d done it before, but had never done it again since then.

“Your hair looks nice.”

“Thanks.” Alex ran a hand through his hair and felt it was all dishevelled. He squinted his eyes at John and saw he was hiding a grin, so he bumped John’s shoulder with his. “Don’t do that!”

“Do what?” John asked innocently.

“Giving me fake compliments. Makes me wonder when your compliments are genuine.” Only his half-awake brain could be so honest. John knew that too.

“You really are still half-asleep.”

“I’m not,” Alex said, giving in to the urge to put his head on John’s shoulder, causing the butterflies in his stomach to fly around freely. John ruffled his hair.

“I do like your hair,” John said. “It’s so…”

“Red,” Alex mumbled.

“…you.”

Alex raised his eyebrows, even though John probably couldn’t see it, but he didn’t want to lift his head. “What do you mean?”

John was silent for a moment. “It’s how red I imagine the fire that’s burning inside you to be. The fire of passion, of ambition, of care… I may not like Thomas, but I did notice how kind you were to him and made sure he wasn’t being left out.” Alex had been more worried about John being the one to feel left out, but he let it slide. He cared for Thomas too. That’s what friends did.

Alex made a noise to let John know he was listening. John continued, “I’m sorry for how I was acting, but I think I might’ve punched Thomas if we exchanged more than ten words at a time. He’s just so… Yeah, I know that’s not what you think about him.” He was silent again as Alex searched for words to say. He could only think about how he liked being so close to John, able to feel his words rumble through his chest before they left his lips. John tapped him on the head and Alex made a noise again.

“Are you listening?”

“Yeah. That was actually really nice of you.” He wondered why the subconscious part of his brain had picked these words, but he went along with it. “I know you don’t like him, but you didn’t act like it. Okay, you were a bit distant, but you didn’t punch him. You even had dinner with him. What happened to starving in your room?” He moved his head in an attempt to see John’s expression, but could only see curls. He gave up and relaxed again.

John gave a chuckle. “I just wanted to see your beautiful face,” he said, and Alex knew he was joking, but his heart still jumped. He poked John in his side, making him chuckle some more. “Okay, okay, I didn’t want to actually starve and I don’t have any food in my room. And it wasn’t that bad, having dinner with Thomas.”

“Good.”

It was silent again, until John said, “You’re still not wondering why I suddenly showed up on your doorstep?” When Alex didn’t answer, he added, “With my guitar?”

Alex shot up. “Oh!”

John grinned at him. “I think I can play Downtown. Want to sing along?”

**Author's Note:**

> ...Oops I wrote twice as many words than usual  
> I want to write angst but hhh I need to write other stuff before we can go there, don't worry tho ;) we'll get there eventually
> 
> Please let me know what you think!!


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